As students across Winnipeg prepare their online calendars, buy fresh notebooks and choose the best mechanical pencils that will need to be refilled, a new kind of back-to-school ritual is taking shape. This one does not involve textbooks or timetables, but fragrance bottles.

Scent the Soul, a unique new business located at 285 Maxwell Place, offers a create-your-own fragrance experience where visitors can mix, test and personalize scents in any combination they want. Custom scents may reflect visitors’ memories, moods or sense of style.

Scent the Soul, launched last month by co-owners Ohine Seidu and Sashana McLeod, aims to fill a gap in Winnipeg’s retail landscape. Inspired by a workshop they attended in Toronto called Orris Labs, the pair decided to bring the idea home.

“We don’t have this in Winnipeg,” said Seidu. “Perfumes or fragrances have always been a luxury product. But for us it was more like a powerful trigger of memory, emotions and identity. We are kind of fascinated by how a single scent can remind us of someone or a particular time in our childhood.”

Inside the workshop, customers are seated at a table lined with rows of bottles offering up to 77 scent options, which range from fruity and floral to woody and earthy. Guests typically spend up to two hours experimenting with combinations and learning the art of layering scents, guided by staff, before bottling their own signature fragrance.

The experience can also accommodate birthday parties, bridal groups and families. Students have also been among the early customers, and Seidu said that customers come in with plans to match their scent to the season.

The pricing is designed with accessibility in mind. While high-end perfumes often sell for $200 or more, a full workshop experience at Scent the Soul costs about $85. Discounts are available for first-time visitors, and customers receive a lifetime loyalty card offering 10 per cent off future visits.

The accessibility of the product continues with every recipe recorded. Once a customer creates a signature fragrance, it can be reordered without repeating the full workshop. Plus, their custom fragrance can even be delivered directly to their door.

For Seidu, who is also a student taking online classes, the workshop is about more than business. He describes it as a space for connection and self-expression.

“The workshop is not just about mixing the ingredients. It’s more like a self-expression,” said Seidu. “Each student, each participant, they bring their own story to the table, they bring their own preferences.” Through these workshops, Seidu said we become human by opening up to one another. Every conversation is welcome.

He recalled one customer who asked for a scent that reminded them of their late grandmother, and the importance of having the conversation to get the details right and remind the
customer of a past experience of theirs.

Some, he said, simply want their fragrance to standout to turn heads the moment they walk by. In the end, the Scent the Soul workshop aims to help people create a personal fragrance to express themselves in their day-to-day lives.